The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi has greeted engineers on Engineer's Day.  "Greetings to all Engineers on Engineer's Day. We remember Sir M. Visvesvaraya on his Jayanti. India is proud of the contribution of our engineers towards nation building”, the Prime Minister said.

Background

Every year, the country celebrates September 15 as National Engineer’s Day to appreciate the contributions of Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya. The Bharat Ratna awardee, Visvesvaraya was born on September 15, 1861 in a village called Muddenahalli in Karnataka. He studied Bachelor of Arts (BA) from the University of Madras and pursued civil engineering at the College of Science in Pune.

A Bharat Ratna awardee, Visvesvaraya had studied Bachelor of Arts (BA) from the University of Madras and pursued civil engineering at College of Science in Pune.

He later patented and installed an irrigation system with water floodgates at the Khadakvasla reservoir near Pune to raise the food supply level and storage to the highest levels. This was also installed at Gwalior’s Tigra Dam and Mysuru’s Krishnaraja Sagara (KRS) dam, the latter of which created one of the largest reservoirs in Asia at the time.

While serving as the Diwan of Mysore, he was awarded ‘Knight’ in 1915 as a commander of the British Indian empire by King George V. He received the Bharat Ratna in 1955, became a member of the London Institution of Civil Engineers before he was awarded a fellowship by the Indian Institute of Science (IISC) Bangalore.

(The author is a trainer for Civil Services aspirants. The views expressed here are personal.)